Interview with Brad Geddes ahead of SMX West in San Jose
Could you tell us something about your life?
That’s a broad question. I live in Chicago and travel quite a bit; so I enjoy taking the family with me on various trips. My 3 year old has already been to London, Maui, and is heading to Munich soon.
What education did you get?
I went to Penn State and have a degree in Psychology. My emphasis was on personality theory; and that has served me remarkably well in the internet marketing arena.
Now you are a well-known expert in Google Adwords and Microsoft adExcelence. When and why did you start your Internet marketing business?
That’s a very long story; so I’ll try to give the brief version. I use to work in the MH/MR (mental health / mental retardation) industry; and spent some time transitioning individuals from institutions into community living facilities and helping them to become productive members of society.
While it’s a very rewarding job, it is also a burnout one. After six years, I just quit with no idea what I was going to do. I already knew site design as it was a bit of a hobby and came across this notion of affiliate marketing. It sounded easy (and in the 1990s it was) and just started making sites and trying to make some money from them. Everything sort of grew up from there.
What is the main difference between advertising capacities of Google and Microsoft?
Google has a lot more distribution and options, especially when you get into display advertising. Microsoft has a lot less inventory, but also has more granular controls about your ad display on search.
You are the founder of Certified Knowledge. Tell us some words about your company and the services you provide.
We do a lot of training both in person and via video tutorials on our site. Of course, just because you know what you’re doing does not mean you have the time to do it. So we also provide a suite of time saving tools. By combining PPC knowledge with time saving tools, even small businesses can run effective PPC accounts.
We also do a fair amount of consulting from small companies to some of the largest AdWords spenders. Our consulting is all over the place as we range from simple account audits to helping companies define their products, technology, to even organizational structures and workflow.
How many employees are there in your company now?
Technically, we’re only a two person company. A good friend of mine owns a dev shop, so we have a team of developers who are dedicated to our tools, and we have several people who do contract work for us on a variety of tasks. Some days we’re only two people; often we’re functioning like a 10-30 person company.
In your clients list there are a lot of brand names - Amazon, Yahoo, RH Donnelley, Business.com, World Directories, and Encyclopedia Brittanica. Would you like to work with Apple? Any others?
I’ve done some work with Google, and that’s always fun as they are one of the search providers, so I’d like to work with them even more.
I find that my favorite companies to work with are mid-sized companies who just want to execute, get things done, figure out how to grow, and are willing to be creative along the way. Some of these companies only have revenues in the 10/s of millions and others might be billion dollar companies but they still know how to be flexible.
Many larger companies are so full of politics that you spend half your time navigating politics and the other half actually working. I don’t know Apple well, so it’s hard to comment without talking to them first and getting a good feel for the company.
I still feel strongly that there’s an amazing opportunity in local SMB marketing for newspapers, yellow pages, and other companies with a strong local sales force. I would like to work with one again that is willing to commit to not just online sales, but also have full buy-in and support from the CEO down through the executives.
According to your opinion, what skills and qualities of character have helped you to reach that you have now?
I have really strong ethics. I will not recommend a product that I haven’t tried and liked. I will not sell or recommend something just to make money. At the end of an engagement, I want the company to be happy they hired me and think of me first when they need additional help.
I’ve turned down some serious money and walked away from huge opportunities because I didn’t believe in the company, their offerings, or their messages. Conversely, I’ve taken less money to work with a company when I felt they were offering something that truly benefited the world. I’d rather be happy, have less stress and less money than have a huge bank account but not like what I’m doing. Luckily, often success and being happy do go hand in hand.
The other fact I’m pretty proud of is that the vast majority of people I’ve hired would like to work with me again. I believe that a team leader should not take credit for their accomplishments; all the credit should go to the team. The focus should be the team. The company should then be smart enough to realize (and unfortunately, not all are) that when a certain people are team leads, the products turn out wonderful; and the leaders are thusly rewarded. I could go on and on about business management and why I’ve been lucky enough to be successful; but that could be an entire book.
What difficulties do you face in your work? How do you cope with them?
My biggest problem is too many demands on my time. I’ve struggled to balance getting things done with streamlining tasks to also telling people when something just isn’t possible or setting very realistic expectations.
At one point in time, I was receiving 500-1000 communication messages (IMs, email, texts, etc) per day. I spent quite a bit of time setting meeting rules, balancing a maker vs manager schedule, and working through how to not live my life in email; but to balance communication and productivity.
I still have a lot of demands on my time, but through technology, rules, and workflows somehow everything gets done. In fact, what was almost a fanatical hobby around organization and workflow has turned into one of my more common consulting gigs - helping companies manage time, organization, and productivity.
On the 1st of March, we will be glad to hear your speech. It will be dedicated to winning PPC strategies. Regarding your experience, what are the main steps to build a successful PPC ad?
A good ad answers the searcher and directs them to take action. A search query is a question. A search result is a set of possible answers. If your ad draws attention to itself, tells someone you can answer their question, and also tells them why they should choose your company, then an ad is usually successful.
Do you think that image ads are more effective than text ads? Or it depends?
It does depend somewhat; but there’s a reason the adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ has been around for a long time - it’s very true. I find image ads often outperform text ads. However, they often cost a little bit more. So, from a CTR standpoint image is almost always better. From a profitability standpoint, it depends on what a click is worth and if you can afford to pay that for images or if it’s better for you to use text.
For what niches in Adwords system is most difficult to find quality traffic?
That’s easy. There are two really difficult areas. High ticket, B2B items with long sales cycles is one of the hardest. Trying to sell bull dozers, electrical contracting for high rise buildings, sprinkler systems for airports, etc has such little search volume; but such high customer value (sometimes you only need a single sale per month or even per year) that you end up spending a lot of time trying to get just a few leads.
The other tough sell is emerging products. When a product or service has not found its way to mainstream search results, often you are trying to create demand instead of just sales. That’s where display can be a big help, and why TV is still a viable outlet. Search doesn’t create demand; it captures existing demand.
What do you expect from attending SMX West 2012?
I want to learn something new or have one of my preconceived notions about something changed by some amazing insight I had not considered. I attend conferences to network and to learn. I expect I’ll accomplish both at SMX.
Please, try to draw a verbal image of the successful modern digital marketer? How do you imagine him/her?
Digital marketing is becoming very specialized. There are people who only focus on creating ads for Google’s display network, or only work on ecommerce sites within Google Analytics. While that level of specialty can be very good, it does miss the big picture of why certain things matter.
I find the best marketers have a basic knowledge of SEO, PPC, display, email, social, conversion optimization, analytics, statistics, and language skills. You don’t have to be an expert in every area, but having a basic knowledge of each area allows you to see big picture patterns that will help a company go from siloing their efforts to integrating their efforts. Of course, having both math and creative skills is a huge bonus, but most people aren’t built that way - we’re usually dominant in one area or the other. Even if you are language dominant, having a solid foundation in Excel can go a long ways being a larger company asset.
What is your personal secret of success?
A strong organization skill set that allows me to balance work and life. Work can consume you; and you need a balance (it’s an old cliché- but I’ve lived through working 18 hour days and 100+ hour weeks). While I work a lot, I also like to unplug as well. I spend time with the family every day I’m not traveling, take my family with me on occasion when I am traveling, and I try to spend about 3 weeks each year with little to no access to the web.
According to your professional point of view, what changes are waiting for PPC advertising in 2012?
I think we’ll see more demographic capabilities. While Google+ exists because Google needs to be in social, they are finally collecting a lot more information to either know or infer demographic and interest patterns that will ultimately lead to more targeting capabilities. The other large expansion will be mobile. 2011 was one of the single largest growth years for smartphones ever (and might be the largest); and that will translate to more total inventory, which then often leads to more segmentation and targeting options.
Now we would like to ask several personal questions.
Your desk book? – My Kindle. I really don’t like paper. I try to digitize everything. My Kindle is absolutely wonderful.
People you hold up as an example? – That’s a tough one that I’m not sure there is an answer to it as I don’t follow any one person closely; and I’m not a celebrity watcher at all. There are many people I respect and listen to their opinions, but I don’t inherently just do something because someone told me - I try to see how it applies to the world around me.
Mac or PC? PC. I think the last Mac I owned was an Apple IIe.
iPhone or Android? Andriod; although the carriers have perverted the OS so much, I’m ready for a 3rd entrant to the marketplace.
Favorite brand? Again, I don’t think I have one. I’m very loyal to Hilton and they treat me well. I like Netflix, Google, Microsoft (especially xbox), etc - but I don’t blindly buy something because of the brand - my loyalty is usually to a product over the company.
Wishes for 2012? - Some fun travels, entertaining stories, creative and enjoyable clients, and I hope to see some companies make the transition to digital strategies and succeed.
Thanks a lot for this interview! We wish you to show your best during SMX West 2012 sessions! See you soon!
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